David Ellison

Because, of course, the surface for the early 19th century, largely unknown realm, a world of impossible speculation.

And there are these moments of lucidity where...

they're able to see underneath and the creatures underneath.

And a new vision of freedom is offered.

It was a slow burn for me.

It took me a little while to get fully invested in it.

But once the chase settled into place and Medina and Kelly were ruthlessly, relentlessly tracking down Lacroix, and Lacroix was finding forms of freedom in this group of friends, and in particular with Emily, this complex and fascinating woman who's losing her sight.

And that relationship...

is meaningful and restorative.

As I said, the stakes then were suddenly quite a bit higher and I was really gripped.

No.

Yes, it's certainly a crucial part of the uncanny.

So that's where something switches out from being intimately familiar to being horrifically abject.

Well, that's a complicated thing to explain.

Freud spent a lot of time trying to explain it, indifferently, I think.

So, essentially, there's two ways of thinking about it.

One is that it's the return of the repressed, where something where we've locked away for various reasons comes back to us, but where we've locked it away in a situation where we're comfortable about the way it's gone.

And then if it comes back to us, that's a nightmare.

It's the intensely familiar thing suddenly revealed in a profoundly unfamiliar light.

So for me, the classic example of the uncanny are dolls.